Better for Kobe Bryant’s Legacy: Retiring a Laker or Winning Another Ring?

The end of the NBA preseason is rarely fruitful terrain for bandying bold predictions, but here’s one that most should feel safe in making: The Los Angeles Lakers won’t win the NBA championship.

Not this year, not next year and—barring some fantastic free-agent coup—not the year after that either.

That could leave Kobe Bryant, the team’s 36-year-old cornerstone, in quite the pickle once his contract extension expires at the end of the 2015-16 season. Retirement is always an option, of course.